Revitalizing the user experience of a start-up audio streaming app
Collaborative design ensures on-target features – and client trust
A sustainable future depends on homes that can not only produce but store their own energy. By storing solar, homes can power themselves through the night, eliminate gas appliances and even feed back to the grid at times of peak demand.
Lunar Energy was founded in 2020 to help move the world towards all-electric homes.
Daylight has been Lunar’s design partner from the beginning.
Launched with the simple, appealing premise of "live stream without a camera”, promising start-up Spoon Radio quickly became one of best-known players in the digital audio space. Though Spoon Radio was very popular, they came to Daylight four years after launch facing difficult challenges: a recent unsuccessful redesign had resulted in a ~30% loss of their user base. They were working hard to rebuild affinity for their product and brand, while addressing several ongoing UX needs at the same time.
Daylight conducted a comprehensive UX audit, which helped Spoon Radio prioritize critical user safety improvements, and identified multiple areas of opportunity. We immediately got to work, using tight design cycles and leveraging user feedback from multiple channels. This enabled us to quickly identify, test and course correct new UX improvements for the app. This flexible and highly collaborative workflow also established a critical foundation of trust with Spoon Radio’s internal design team.
Once the new designs began to roll out, the effect was clear: the length of time that users were listening had doubled from when Daylight began its work with Spoon Radio. Over the course of the launch of the new designs, the number of daily listens increased 350% in the space of a week.
The power of knowing the right questions, and the right people to answer them
Spoon Radio was particularly interested in addressing the Onboarding, Discovery and Referral aspects of their app. Daylight’s design audit revealed a range of areas within the app where the user experience could be improved, which were mapped against Spoon Radio’s areas of interest. Daylight further parsed the opportunities we identified by the team best suited to address them: Spoon, Daylight, or a close collaboration between both design teams. This effort to fully survey and categorize the opportunity space enabled us to jointly craft a project scope that maximized our value to Spoon Radio.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
Design, Test, Synthesize, Repeat
With the opportunities and responsibilities clearly delineated, Daylight organized the work into a series of 3-week-long design sprints, each focused on a specific challenge. During each cycle, the Daylight team ideated, prototyped and tested a range of ideas. Throughout the project with Spoon Radio, we created roughly 75 rapid-but-functional prototypes. Promising prototypes were shared with Spoon Radio users, generating ongoing real-world, actionable feedback. Alongside our extensive prototyping efforts, the Spoon radio team deployed elements of our design choices in live A/B testing on the app, which further honed the UI design aesthetic and language choices.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
Good design, done well
At the beginning of our engagement, the Spoon Radio team was understandably hesitant: their prior experience with outside UX designers had gone seriously awry. We applied our human-centered, evidence-based approach to Spoon Radio’s design challenges, and ensured that transparency and collaboration with the client remained a priority throughout. This process measurably repaired and improved the Spoon Radio app experience for its users; it also repaired and improved the Spoon Radio team’s relationship with the UX design discipline. After this project ended, Spoon Radio was intent on deepening their own institutional commitment to good UX design.
Prior to our rebrand work, the San Francisco Health Network's messaging placed emphasis on the providers and the system. The Network described itself as the City’s “only complete system of care.” The Network logo was an icon of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Through our work, we wanted to shift focus from describing the system to communicating the value added for the patient. We sought to:
- Publicly reaffirm San Francisco’s commitment to accessible health care for all of its residents, regardless of immigration status or insurance;
- Create a unifying brand that resonated deeply with patients and staff; and
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
- Give staff desperately needed tools to clearly and consistently describe the Network, its values, and its services.
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